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Why are shiners so much more expensive than minnows? Is it harder to breed them? Does it take longer for them to grow up? Do they eat more expensive food? Do they need to be stored in more expensive equipment? I'm just wondering why the price difference is so drastic. My local bait shop has a dozen minnows for $1.75 and a dozen small shiners for $8.75. That's a big difference.
Something isn't right with that price difference.
Wild shiners in this area are about $20 for a dozen in bait shops. They get them from a few guys who do that for a livlihood.
But you wont get rich catching and selling them for sure.
They use 50# bags of animal feed for chum, and will have numerous bags of it on board their boat along with a very large bait tank.
They first go about baiting the target areas, and later come back and cast net them. But it dosent always go as easy as it sounds.
Shiners are larger than minnows and catch bigger fish. They also spawn at much less numbers than fathead minnows which spawn all summer long. Jumbo shiners about 6" also lose money for bait suppliers so that will further raise the prices. Check out this article for information what eats shiners. I prefer to fish with fathead minnows for crappie but for anything larger than crappie, go with golden shiners.
Shiners are caught in the wild. Minnows are farmed raised. You can find farm raised shiners....but people say they don't work nearly as well.
wild shiners are freaks of nature when it comes to evading bass. they will do some incredible houdini tricks to escape
Fatheads are far easier to breed, transport and keep at all levels than golden shiners. So the market is dominated by the much cheaper, easier to grow and vend fatheads, and will be so long as fishermen are willing to settle for them. Fatheads are also easier for the fishers to keep going to and on the water.
Oh... I get it now. I thought you said Shriners were more expersive than minnows [emoji6]
Sent from my SM-G960U using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app
Gotta admit that some Shriners are certainly more expressive...Quote:
Originally Posted by silverside
You would think because of the ultra high cost of lumber that has went up 6x the cost of ayear ago,( a sheet of 7/16 osb is at the 43.00 dollar mark when a year ago it was only a little over 7.00).the cost of minnows would go down.cause Im buying minnows instead of lumber it will rot in the saw mill yard before I buy any lumber.Ill check what shiners go for in my neck of the woods and will post.I would think dinomite would be cheaper than them (I dont recomend using any you know) maybe they buff&shine there little bellys,Id use every jig I had in my tackle box before I paid that much for shiners..But thats just me...
size of the shiners might come into play ?Quote:
Originally Posted by ArthurLK11
and golden shiners I think you are talking about only spawn once a year .
but without knowing for sure what they are calling "shiners" it would be hard to know for sure .
to raise them to bass bait size might get a bit pricey ?
sure is a big price differential . likely do to the size of the bait is my thought
BIG shiners here are expensive like that as well .
and "minnows" are much cheaper .
That's a big difference in price for sure! Think I would go with the small ones and double up the numbers in my bait bucket! :biggrin
Rick